Hey it’s my birthday. Number 42. A year that I have been looking forward to since I turned 40. As years go 40 is a milestone, life beginning at 40 and all of that. But 41, to me, seemed to be a write off, nothing special. 42 however, has the element of magic about it, considering Douglas Adams named it …

I am launching a new site tomorrow. Here’s the preamble: All of life is important and deserves one’s full presence and attention. There are no ordinary moments. This is a blog about doing new things, small things that encourage you to learn more about yourself and the world around you. Each day I’ll post a new task for you to …

One big blur. That was my yesterday. A day consumed by meetings. Important meetings, but never the less, the killer of getting things done.

I stumbled upon Tom Hodgkinson’s website, the Idler. I was inspired enough by the concept that I bought two of his books, How to be Idle and How to be Free. My first purchases from iBooks. (I am really getting hooked on the iPad. I don’t even carry my MacBook with me anymore.)

How to be Free kept me busy on my train journeys. Tom’s style is to rant. He rants against a system he perceives as oppressive and detrimentally to our ability to live free of the consumer society we find ourselves drowning in day to day. I like the ideas in the book, which should help me put up with the ‘rant against the system’ style in which the book is written. I’ll write a complete review later once I finish the book.

(sorry for not including links within the text, I am writing this post on the go from my iPhone.)

“What we do we are. We are what we think. What we think is determined by what we learn. What we learn is determined by what we experience and what we experience is determined by what we expose ourselves to and what we do with that experience.”

I have in mind to evolve, to break out of habits that bind me, that confine me, that leave my soul a stagnate pool of green slime. My habits are vicious little gnomes that enslave my behaviors, perceptions, emotions, and thoughts and limit my range of possibilities in a limitless world. I think it is time to fight and win …

After a week of train travel, I needed a break from motion, so I opted for a chilled out weekend at home doing something close to nothing. We did manage to catch The Karate Kid, which I enjoyed. I love Jackie Chan. He seems like a real down to earth guy who loves what he does. The story stayed true …

I decide to have a sit down lunch today. It has been at least a couple of weeks since I’ve had a decent burger. I spot the Slug and the Lettuce. They do a decent bacon cheeseburger, so I head there. The place is not busy which surprises me for a Friday lunch time in the city. A quick glance …

When I kissed Ruth goodbye this morning, the position she was laying in reminded me of the the Hanged Man in the Tarot Major Arcana. I had one of those moments of “hmmm, I better follow this intuition,” so I snatched the mini tarot book from my bedroom book shelf. I wanted to know what the significance of the Hanged …

A new day, another train ride down to London. I was in an optimistic mood this morning. It felt like I had turned a corner and ahead of me the horizon and wide open possibilities for the future. It is exciting.

My book about Pythagorean numerology arrived yesterday. It is written by Glynis McCants, a former stand-up comic and writer. I have dabbled in numerology in the past. I am not sure what has guided me back here, but it fits in with the project I am working on at present. I figured out my Life Path number which is the most important number in the series of numbers that are meant to affect our lives. My Life Path number is 3. Three’s are creatives. I must admit that the description of a 3 Life Path seems uncannily accurate. McCant’s description of a 3 person confirmed what I already knew about myself, which is what some would say makes subjects like numerology and astrology believable because people project themselves into the words, which reflect what you already believe to be true about yourself. I guess it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It only matters if you believe it to be true and find the words helpful in your own personal reflection. I tend to evaluate these things on whether they are useful or not useful. If it’s useful, use it; if not, discard it. In this case, the words are useful and that is enough for me.

On an entirely different note…

Joy, the trolly lady, has stopped speaking to me. I used to buy my coffee from the stand on the platform and the occasional bacon roll from Joy. She gave me a lecture once about how I could save money by buying my coffee and my bacon roll from her. So I did. However, her coffee is not that greatest, plus I was spending a fortune buying coffees. So I decided to make my own coffee and bring it in a thermos. Joy didn’t like this one bit. The first time I brought my own coffee, she gave me a dirty look. The second time she decided she’d flog me the bacon roll anyway. Mostly I say no thanks. But she asks every day. Last Friday I asked her for a bacon roll and she said sorry I don’t have any. Call me paranoid, but I got the feeling she had some bacon rolls, but she wanted to make sure she offered them to her regular customers first. Fair enough, I guess. Monday, I brought my own bacon roll and coffee onboard. And now Joy has fallen out with me completely. Today I didn’t have a coffee or a bacon with me and Joy wasn’t compelled to offer to sell me either. She just looked at me, squinted, and kept on pushing her trolley right past me.

The rest of my day passed without incident. Things were quiet on the work front. The kind of quiet that precedes a storm. These next few weeks will be critical.

At lunch, I decided to wander down streets I had never been, in search of a new place to eat. There were plenty of choices. I settled on a little joint called the Snaxx Cafe. Nothing fancy. The prices were much the same as any place else in London. It was quiet, clean, and had a good view so I decided to stay and enjoy a bacon and egg sandwich.

I am still fighting though a cold I picked up from sitting in iceboxes all day. It boggles my mind that on the train and in the office I work that the air condition is blowing full blast as if it were hot outside. Even stranger, when asked to if the air can be turned off, the reply is “We can’t. There is a summer setting and a winter setting and we can’t turn the air conditioning off until late September.” OK.

I decide to burn the cold out off me by sitting in the steam room and the sauna after work. I find extreme heat often cures me. We’ll see.

All life is technically an adventure, a bold, usually risky, undertaking with uncertain outcomes.

However, because most of us live in expectation that everything should turn out just as we want it to, life becomes oddly a function of habit where we live in the immediate future or past, but rarely ever the present.

I notice it in myself. I drive the same route to work in the morning, my expectation being that today’s drive should more or less resemble yesterday’s drive. When something happens that upsets that expectation, an accident, a slow tractor hogging the rode, the immediate reaction is to get annoyed or angry. I take the same train, sit in the same carriage, generally sit in the same seat if no one has beaten me to it. I walk the same route to the office, stop at the same coffee shop, order the same drink (in fact, I do this so habitually that the staff don’t even asked what I want to drink anymore, they automatically start preparing my medium black coffee to go).

Here is were the past creeps in. Because it happened that way yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that, we automatically presumes the same thing will happen again today. But in reality the outcome is uncertain. However, we presume it to be certain and get upset when it doesn’t turn out just as we want it.

In an adventure, the uncertainty of the outcome is what makes it exciting.

Imagine what life would be like if we embraced the uncertainty of life from moment to moment.

I wonder if we slip into presumptions and habits of routine because we cannot take too much excitement? Or do we need to feel certain, even if it is a false certainty just so we can function? Or is it that we can’t break the cycle of our mind either being in the future or the past from one moment to the next?

The visible world is only a construct in your mind. When you see something you are not seeing what is really there. What you are seeing is your visual cortex’s best guess of what is there. Your visual cortex then produces something that nearly resembles the object you believe you are seeing. Most people have, at one time or another, used the phrase: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” in reality it is more likely: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

Loving this… Ten Things I have Learned Part of AIGA Talk in London, November 22, 2001 Now on www.miltonglaser.com Please check out Milton Glaser’s site here and you can find the original essay here. 1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE. This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in …

“As is the life of the leaves so is that of men. The wind scatters the leaves to the ground: the vigorous forest puts forth others, and they grow in the spring season. Soon one generation of men comes another ceases.”